


Tear Down The Walls

by taichara



Category: Robotech
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-01
Updated: 2015-03-01
Packaged: 2018-03-15 19:19:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3458843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taichara/pseuds/taichara
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Trauma and loss had made him lose himself; now trauma and loss would bring him back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tear Down The Walls

**Author's Note:**

> prompt: _any, any, ambushed_

If anyone ever bothered to ask Lieutenant Colleen Winters -- better known as "Frost", these benighted days -- it was always the tiny little pisshole towns that held the biggest surprises. It didn't matter if that surprise was a tiny homegrown resistance cell, an attempt to make an itty bitty kingdom from scratch, or a village of crazy bastards trying to magic up moonshine from Flowers, it was always something.

This time around, in the tiny pisshole town of Bellcross, it was the combination of a barely-spouting path of Flowers that her team promised to eradicate on the way out of town, and a very strange refugee indeed. Hell, her group's resident backwoods doctor type was -- at her request -- still making the rounds and asking questions about Bellcross' John Doe in question, because the whole damn thing was too odd to let pass, and she herself was oh-so-casually watching said John Doe as he methodically carted the Spitfire's bartered supplies across the dusty square where Zhang and his hoverhauler waited.

_You're a strange one, no two ways about it, and I want to know where you came from ..._

Between them, Len and Frost had turned up much the same intel, scanty as it was, and all the more interesting that the locals hadn't wanted to give it up until she and Zhang had produced battered ASC identification (and Frost, drawing the anxious Ms. Calder aside, added her old UEEF ident to the mix). John Doe had been found in the patchy forest to the southwest some months after the Masters' invasion attempt collapsed, along with the remains of some kind of small ship or capsule and, apparently, a Spartas. There was no sign of the man's hovertank in the town, but Calder _did_ show Frost the man's body armour, hidden in her cellar.

_Definitely ATAC armour, whoever he is. Goddamnit, times like this I'd kill for a working database._

_You might be a tanker, or stupidly good at passing yourself off as one -- once -- or something else could be going on. I'm starting to suspect the third even if the first pans out._

John Doe paused with a supply bale on one shoulder, turning slowly to listen to Zhang's patiently repeated requests. Even in the ruddy light of sunset the man looked pale; Tirolian pale, to go with those high cheekbones and sharp jawline and fey, fey features. But he was no willowy clone, not by a long shot, even if, as Calder and others had noted, those lavender-grey ringlets were obviously not dyed that colour. No Triumvirate clone had that build. A conundrum even for Frost, who had dealt with Tirolians before she was sent back to Earth on Carpenter's ill-fated ship, let alone your average civilian more used to Zentraedi. Which was, in fact, the most common theory about John Doe -- that he was Zentraedi, or a half-breed, even if he looked on the side of too old for that parentage.

Terran, Zentraedi, or whatever he was, he'd been virtually catatonic when the hunters had found him and not all that much better since. He didn't speak; he'd learned (re-learned?) basic life skills, but needed direction for day to day living and seemed 'lost in his own head', as Calder had put it, and Len had confirmed that there seemed to be some kind of severe trauma involved but the exact type and cause was beyond his diagnosis. So, John Doe was kept occupied as a helpful pair of hands about the little community under the watchful eye of Roseanne Calder, the local general goods trader.

_Even the locals don't think you came from Earth. I suspect you'd have been in a world more hurt if they'd found you functional or without Southern Cross gear, whoever you are --_

Across the square, the abandoned theatre exploded in a hail of white fire.

Bedlam erupted before Frost found breath to curse. Invid -- fucking _Invid!_ \-- three of them hurtling from the sky, glinting bloody rust, skidding down the square, clawing, slashing, raining annihilation on everything and everyone in their path. Three scouts, and a fourth, a shocktrooper purple as a bruise, hanging overhead like some horrid scarab of death. The Spitfires poured out of shops and the tavern, raced down the main drag; Zhang lobbed armour, weapons at them from the flatbed, supplies forgotten. Frost raced to the truck through the very legs of the lead scout, snatched up her Wolverine, and turned to face the enemy -- only to see Roseanne Calder rocketing out her front door.

_Damned idiot, she needs to get to the underground -- oh fucking damnit._

Calder was headed straight for John Doe. He was staring at the scouts, transfixed, frozen. Frost could hear her pleading --

-*-

"Come over here! You need to come with me, those things are dangerous --!"

Her voice registered from far away. He knew her; he knew Rosanne better than he knew anything, knew that she worried, could tell she was afraid now, what could he do about it ...?

Go with her? That made sense, didn't it? But ... those things ... he knew ...

No, he'd go with Rosanne ...

-*-

\-- and the whole terrible tableau came grinding to a slow and merciless crawl before Frost's horrified stare, as if some film footage on halting playback. Calder rushing towards her unlikely ward; his confusion, hesitation, then -- finally! -- loping in her direction ...

... too late. The lead scout saw, and took action, ignoring the gunfire from those rebels who'd reclaimed their weapons from Zhang. With the swipe of one cruel curved claw, Calder's lifeblood splashed across the square.

-*-

_no_

_no_

_nonononono not again **I am not losing everything again!**_

-*-

John Doe's unholy roar shattered what was left of Frost's composure. With sudden, unearthly agility he lunged towards the crumpling Calder, only to twist on a dime as she fell limply to dodge around the scouts and their attempts to bring claw and annihilation disc to bear, charging directly towards her and Zhang. Before she realized what was happening her Wolverine was torn from her hands and he was gone again amongst the smoking rubble and the terrified cries -- and in a burst of plasma and shattering ruby shards the hovering shocktrooper crashed to the ground, holed through the optic, leaking green nutrients into the dust.

_What --_

It was him. Replacement rifle at the ready, hammering away at the scouts with with the others, Frost saw the flash of lavender darting between the now-disorganized Invid; she could _hear_ him, mute no longer, a torrent of incomprehensible fury that flipped discordantly through almost guttural English and the musical trill of Tirolian, deeper notes than she'd ever heard before. 

His second kill followed on the heels of his first, the scout holed through the optic as neatly as the trooper had been. The Spitfires took down the others with missiles and concentrated fire, Frost swearing under her breath at the damage being done to the hapless town despite the best efforts of her and hers.

_I think everyone else got under cover at least ..._

She signaled to Zhang and Len; both nodded. Zhang rounded up the rest of the Spitfires to assess damage to the area, assess their dwindling munitions stockpile and strip whatever convertible cells the Invid mecha might be sporting, while Len pulled his kits from the locker bolted to the flatbed and headed off to help whoever might still be alive and in need of it. That accomplished, Frost slung her rifle over her shoulder and -- very carefully, very slowly -- made her way towards the heartbreaking tableau in the wreckage of the square.

He was hunkered down, half kneeling, with Calder's mangled body cradled in his arms; his hair had worked free and was trailing in the blood that smeared liberally across his face and everywhere else Frost could see. She didn't get within twenty paces before his head snapped up and the Wolverine swung to bear, propped between knee and ribs, shaking but primed, before he registered her presence and very pointedly lowered the weapon. Tossing it towards her, he stood slowly, Calder in his arms.

Those violet eyes were brightly burning now --

"You and your men. You were asking about me."

His voice was low, abyssal almost, wracked with emotion. No sign of Triumverate reverb there. Frost nodded once, ignoring the Wolverine where it lay on the stained ground at her feet.

"I was. If it matters, or helps, I used to go by Lieutenant Colleen Winters, Army of the Southern Cross, unattached, formerly from the UEEF frigate Tokugawa under Major John Carpenter."

"So you've been to Tirol."

She nodded again, and was rewarded with a thin smile that did nothing to dim the fury in those eyes.

"I am Zor Prime --"

She choked; he ignored her --

"-- Zor Prime, formerly Warlord of the Tirolian fleet, assigned to the Fifteenth Alpha Tactical Armoured Corps under Lieutenant Dana Sterling, which you may or may not have heard about."

For a breath he turned away, taking in the smoking Invid hulks, the ruined square, the blood beneath his feet. Then his burning gaze locked onto Frost once again.

"And I am going to kill every last one of them."


End file.
